People Before Profit blog

Today in labor history: Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" released

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 17:29:00 +0000

Twenty-five years ago today Spike Lee's union-made blockbuster movie on race and racism, "Do the Right Thing" was released in theaters nationwide. The film was set in Brooklyn, N.Y., during a time of sharp racial tensions fueled by then-Mayor Ed Koch, the New York Police Department and several racist attacks during the 1980s.

Lee dedicated his 1989 film to Eleanor Bumpers, a 66-year-old African American woman, who was shot to death in 1984 by New York police officers while they were evicting Bumpers from her Bronx apartment. In a New York magazine interview, Lee said, "Eleanor Bumpurs-[the police] had already shot her finger off. Then they killed her with a shotgun. Sixty-six years old. Mayor Koch, he was the one responsible, I feel, because he was giving the signals, the wink-wink, like it's open season."

Other high profile racist crimes included the 1986 death of 23-year-old Michael Griffith who was struck and killed by a car in Howard Beach, Queens, after he was beaten and chased onto a highway by a mob of white youth; and the infamous vigilante Bernhard Goetz, who in 1984, shot and seriously wounded four young Black youth in the NYC subway because they allegedly were going to mug him.

The film has been hailed as a "masterpiece," not only for its social content, but for its innovative film techniques. Lee's break-through film also helped to boost careers of notable actors including Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez and Danny Aiello, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. However, the film was snubbed for the Best Picture category, eliciting an on air protest by actress Kim Basinger who said, "The best film of the year is not even nominated, and it's Do the Right Thing." The film also included civil rights icon and actress Ruby Dee, who died June 12, and her husband, the late actor and activist Ossie Davis.

Lee said Do the Right Thing was his "first union film" and it led to advancing racial diversity in New York's film industry and crews. When asked about "one of the movie's biggest legacies," Lee said, "I looked at the rosters, and for the most part, it was white males. Especially the Teamsters. So we had some conversations."

President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama congratulated Lee on the occasion of the film's 25^th anniversary at a June 27 celebration at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and recalled that they saw the film during their first "official date."

In a video recording (see below) the president said, "So Spike, thank you for helping me impress Michelle, and thank you for telling a powerful story. Today, I've got a few more grey hairs than I did back in 1989. You don't look like Mookie anymore. But Do the Right Thing still holds up a mirror to our society, and it makes us laugh, and think and challenges all of us to see ourselves in one another."

Followed by the First Lady who said, "It's really a testament to your vision and to everyone who helped you make this movie possible, including the great Ruby Dee, who we will remember always. So congratulations, Spike! And we hope you all have a great time!"

"The Liberator": Simón Bolívar biopic has epic sweep of revolution

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 15:41:00 +0000

Film fans rejoice - the Simón Bolívar biopic The Liberator, which U.S. premiered at the LA Film Festival, is the state of the art for progressive motion pictures.

The Venezuelan/Spanish co-production stars Caracas-born Edgar Ramírez (Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated for the 2010 biopic Carlos, about the terrorist called "Carlos the Jackal"), who also executive produced the film. Using a flashback structure, Libertador (as it is called in Spanish in this Spanish-language film with some spoken English and French subtitles) follows Bolívar's evolution from the spoiled scion of a plantation-owning family into a sort of early 19^th-century Che Guevara.

Prodded by his philosophical teacher Simón Rodríguez (Francisco Denis) and the social injustice he witnesses, the Venezuelan evolves into the leader of a liberation movement to end Spanish colonialism in South America and to establish "Gran Colombia," a continent-wide republic based on the best ideals of the Enlightenment and of the American and French Revolutions.

In addition to top acting, The Liberator has high production values, with stunning cinematography, including soaring aerial camerawork by the Spanish director of photography Xavi Giménez as Bolívar's army, Hannibal-like, crosses the Andes. The artistry of production designer Paul D. Austerberry and costume designer Sonia Grande combine to realistically render a sense of early 19^th-century Madrid, Paris, and South America, which is so vital for this period piece.

The talented international crew includes Indian editor Tariq Anwar, who has cut action-packed battle sequences full of riveting montages. Gustavo Dudamel, music director of Venezuela's Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar and conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, composed The Liberator's original score. At the LAFF U.S. premiere a bearded, dapper Ramírez called Dudamel "a genius who breathes music in every atom. The music is almost another character in the film."

The Liberator's screenplay was written by U.S.-born Timothy Sexton, who co-wrote 2014's Cesar Chavez, as well as the 2006 TV movie Walkout (about L.A.'s historic Chicano student strike in 1968) and the 2001 made-for-TV Civil Rights movie about Dr. King, Ralph Abernathy, and Rosa Parks called Boycott. The Liberator is skillfully directed by Caracas-born Alberto Arvelo (2004's Habana, Havana).

In addition to the gifted Ramírez, the cast includes actors Western audiences might be familiar with: Danny Huston as Torkington, a gambler/profiteer and/or British agent provocateur; Gary Lewis portrays James Rooke, a Dublin-born soldier who led a sort of "International Brigade" as part of Bolívar's liberation forces; and Venezuela-born Steve Wilcox plays a character called the Black Rider.

In addition to gripping combat sequences, The Liberator includes tender, sexy love scenes with some nudity, as it tells Bolívar's story as both a freedom fighter and as a man. Spanish actress María Valverde plays Bolívar's wife. During a later part of the title character's life, Colombia-born Juana Acosta portrays Bolívar's lover Manuela Sáenz, whom Bolívar called "liberator of the liberator" after she saved him from an assassination plot that opens the picture. Significantly, the film also depicts Black characters as part of the South American milieu and population, with Zenaida Gamboa rather sympathetically playing Bolívar's adoptive mother, Hipólita.

With its big-screen historical epic sweep and larger than life characters, The Liberator is a sort of left-wing Gone with the Wind, with the important differences that most of the former's actors depict actual people in a fact-based drama and, unlike GWTW, the Bolívar biopic is on the side of the oppressed, not the slaveholders. It is an important history lesson artfully taught with cinematic lightning-and Dudamel's thunder. This Venezuelan co-production can also be seen as a testament to Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution, and as an example of 21^st-century revolutionary culture.

Prepare to be liberated: The Liberator is tentatively set for theatrical release in the U.S. on August 22. Viva Bolívar!

The Liberator

Director: Alberto Arvelo

Writer: Timothy J. Sexton

Stars: Édgar Ramírez, Erich Wildpret, María Valverde |

Photo: Still from film.

The brief but bright life of Aaron Swartz - R.I.P.

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 14:01:00 +0000

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is required viewing for anyone who values free speech and justice. Brian Knappenberger's riveting documentary is also a case study in Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department's selective prosecution. As we know, the Obama administration has not prosecuted the financial sector for basically wrecking much of the world economy.

While Big Brother and the Holder Company gave Wall Street a pass, "Our prison population," as Matt Taibbi has pointed out, "is now the biggest in the history of human civilization." But who does the DOJ decide to throw the book at? Internet whiz kid Aaron Swartz, who at the age of 14 helped develop RSS ("Really Simple Syndication," as it enables automatic summarization of online information). The Chicago-born prodigy went on to cofound the social networking and news website Reddit, a platform for Net communities.

Swartz attended Stanford and became a fellow at Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. The passionate advocate of Internet freedom and free access to information became an off- and online activist, harnessing the power of the Web to monitor the powers that be. In 2008 he founded Watchdog.net to aggregate data about politicians, and helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

A sort of Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden of academia, from September 2010 to January 2011 Swartz is believed to have mass downloaded documents from MIT's JSTOR database, a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. Although it's not certain what Swartz's motivation was for allegedly doing so, the hacktivist was apparently attempting to thwart efforts to profiteer off of human knowledge by making this information available free of charge to the general public, which is a recurring theme of The Internet's Own Boy.

In early 2011, the Secret Service and Cambridge Police Department started investigating. The U.S. Attorney's office opened a criminal investigation into the hacking of MIT's network. Swartz's office and home were raided, and grand jury and subpoena actions commenced. Although JSTOR declined to press charges and MIT proclaimed its "neutrality" in the matter, federal prosecutor Stephen P. Heymann, who had a background in prosecuting computer hacking, pursued the case with Inspector Javert-like intensity. On July 14, 2011, Swartz was charged with four felony counts, including theft of computer information, and the 24-year-old was arrested days later.

It was bulldog versus watchdog. Aaron pled not guilty to an eventual 13 felony counts against him. WikiLeaks' Julian Assange may have been beyond Washington's reach, and the underground collective Anonymous too cagey to be caught (Knappenberger previously directed the 2012 documentary We Are Legion: The Story of the Hactivists). But Swartz was within the system's grasp, and it appears the DOJ was determined to make an example of him. Faced with economic ruin and imprisonment for years by a vengeful administration -- the Obama regime has been extraordinarily vindictive toward whistleblowers, charging more people with the Espionage Act than all previous U.S. administrations combined -- the free-spirited Aaron appears to have been pushed over the edge on January 11, 2013. But on March 6, an unrepentant Attorney General Holder defended Swartz's prosecution before a Senate committee.

Matt Taibbi exposes that when Holder became a Clinton administration deputy attorney general, he formulated the theory of "collateral consequences" for charging corporations. This concept maintains that when considering corporate wrongdoing, prosecutors "may take into account" how a trial and conviction might affect a firm's employees and the possible impact on the economy. This doctrine has resulted in fewer and fewer prosecutions, with fines for corporations but no jail time for CEOs and banksters. Apparently, Holder and Heymann did not take into account Swartz's youthfulness or that since childhood he'd suffered from ulcerative colitis -- or that the institutions he'd purportedly hacked were not pressing charges. (See my interview with Matt Taibbi in the summer issue of The Progressive Magazine.)

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is compelling and powerful, combining archival footage and original interviews with notable academics and politicians, as well as Aaron's relatives, friends, and lovers. This gripping, must-see documentary -- especially relevant as the struggle for Net neutrality continues and the Snowden case unfolds -- is being released theatrically and on Amazon and Hulu.

R.I.P. Aaron Swartz: Your bulb burned briefly, but brightly.

Film Review

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Directed by Brian Knappenberger

2014, Not rated, 105 mins.

Photo: Aaron Swartz at a 2009 Boston Wikipedia Meetup (CC).

How Joe Louis became a symbol of the fight against racism

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:37:00 +0000

On June 19, 1936 the Brown Bomber Joe Louis climbed through the ropes at the Yankee Stadium in New York to face German heavyweight contender Max Schmeling in front of a sell-out crowd to contest a non-title bout scheduled for 15 rounds.

Louis was just 22 when he faced Schmeling for the first time, undefeated in 24 fights. Schmeling had already won and lost the world title and at 30 was felt to be easy pickings for his much younger and more complete opponent, who was already on the way to establishing the legend he was destined to become.

The backdrop: fascism in Europe, lynchings in U.S

The onward march of fascism in Europe was the backdrop to the fight. Adolf Hitler had been in power in Germany for three years, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was intent on reliving the glory days of the Roman empire and Spain was embroiled in a brutal civil war which foreshadowed the cataclysm that was to engulf Europe and the world just a few years later.

Meanwhile, the United States regarded itself as the home of freedom and democracy, even though for young black men like Joe Louis it was closer to hell, with lynchings still a regular occurrence in parts of the south and blacks treated as second-class citizens even in areas without formal segregation.

The fight itself proved that Schmeling's claim to have identified a flaw in the Brown Bomber's style was not mere hyperbole. Louis had a habit of lowering his left hand after jabbing with it, which Schmeling aimed to exploit with right hands.

The German dropped Louis to the canvas for the first time in his career with just such a right hand in the fourth round and by the time he finally knocked him out in the 12th he was ahead on all three of the judges' scorecards.

It was a major upset. In black communities throughout the US Louis' first defeat was met with huge consternation by people who saw in him their savior and hope.

Maya Angelou wrote: "My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. ... If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help."

Meanwhile, after a personal message from Hitler congratulating him, Schmeling told a German reporter: "At this moment I have to tell Germany, I have to report to the Fuhrer in particular, that the thoughts of all my countrymen were with me in this fight.

"That the Fuhrer and his faithful people were thinking of me. This thought gave me the strength to succeed in this fight. It gave me the courage and the endurance to win this victory for Germany's colors."

The second fight: Schmeling and Louis political symbols

By the time of the second fight two years later, the world lay on the brink of war and the Nazis' terror campaign against communists, socialists, trade unionists, the disabled, gays, Gypsies and Jews was underway.

Schmeling and Louis were now political symbols for their respective countries whether they liked it or not and, as the fight on June 22 1938 approached, again held at New York's Yankee Stadium, the tension far exceeded any that had been present in the lead-up to the first contest.

Despite his message praising Hitler following the first fight Schmeling was not a member of the Nazi party and always denied Nazi claims of racial superiority.

His wife and mother were prevented from travelling to the US with him to forestall the possibility of them defecting. His entourage included a Nazi official to handle press and publicity.

It was this official who was responsible for issuing the infamous statement that a black man could not defeat Schmeling and that his purse would be used to help pay for more German tanks.

As for Louis, he attended a meeting with President Franklin D Roosevelt at the White House prior to the fight, where he was left in no doubt of the importance of the outcome to the country at large.

The irony was striking

The irony was striking - a young black man whose people were being systematically denied their civil and human rights had become the champion of the country responsible.

Louis was a different fighter to two years earlier. Since losing to the German in 1936 he'd gone on to win the world heavyweight title and successfully defended it three times.

He was 25 and fully in his prime, which told from the opening bell when he went straight on the offensive, unleashing crunching combinations against Schmeling's body and head.

The German had no answer to the barrage and went down after just 90 seconds. When the action resumed, Louis picked up where he'd left off, again sending his opponent to the canvas.

This time Schmeling's corner, realizing their man was being taken apart, intervened to call a halt to what by now was a public execution. The fight was over in the first round, causing the 70,000 people crammed into the stadium to go wild.

Perhaps the most famous line in the history of boxing was coined in the aftermath by the leading sportswriter of the day, Jimmy Cannon, who described Louis as "a credit to his race - the human race."

The victory propelled Louis to fame and celebrity, though he was studious in not displaying any of the defiance or controversy that typified the career of his black predecessor Jack Johnson.

He knew his role and performed it to the letter, serving in the forces in World War II, in which his fame was exploited by the government in the war effort. He ended up broke as a greeter in a Las Vegas casino in his twilight years and died in 1981.

Schmeling donated money to pay for the funeral and also acted as a pallbearer, testimony to the respect and friendship both men went on to enjoy after sharing the ring together.

Schmeling returned to Germany after the fight to find his status had plummeted. The Nazis no longer treated him as a national hero or symbol of Aryan manhood - no great disappointment to the reluctant Schmeling. Indeed, the German champion provided sanctuary to two Jewish boys later the same year during the Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews. After the war, during which he was conscripted to serve as a paratrooper, Schmeling embarked on a career in business. He died in 2005 just shy of his 100th birthday.

Louis, as with Mohammed Ali in later years, was more than just a boxer to his people. He was a symbol of pride, strength and dignity in the face of the oppression they suffered in the land of the free. Martin Luther King later described what Louis meant to them when he wrote about the execution of a young black prisoner in a southern prison. As the poison gas pellets were dropped in the death chamber and the gas swirled upwards, his last words were: "Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis. Save me, Joe Louis..."

Reposted from MorningStar.

Photo: The Monument to Joe Louis, known as "The Fist," is a memorial to the boxer at Detroit's Hart Plaza. Dedicated in 1986, the sculpture was commissioned by Sports Illustrated magazine and created by Mexican-American sculptor Robert Graham. Graham referred to the sculpture as a "battering ram," representing the power of Louis' punch inside and outside the ring -- his efforts to fight Jim Crow laws. Wikipedia, Einar E. Kvaran, fair use.

"Sarajevo": Saga of 1914 joins ranks of great pacifist films

Fri, 27 Jun 2014 12:26:00 +0000

This year's South East European Film Festival in Los Angeles started with the world premiere of Sarajevo, an Austrian feature about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The liquidation of the heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian throne in Sarajevo, the capital of the empire's Bosnia and Herzegovina province, took place 100 years ago on June 28, 1914. The shooting, believed to be carried out by members of the Serbian extremist group "Black Hand," triggered the events that erupted into World War I a month later, on July 28.

Like Oliver Stone in 1991's seminal JFK, Sarajevo's director Andreas Prochaska and writer Martin Ambrosch have created a counter-narrative to the official version of events as to why the archduke was shot. Their counter-version is full of dark conspiracy theories. Immediately after Ferdinand's slaying the authorities task examining magistrate Dr. Leo Pfeffer (Florian Teichtmeister) to investigate the crime. A bicycle-riding loyal servant of the state, Pfeffer does so, but in the course of his formal investigation, like New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in JFK, Pfeffer uncovers unsettling evidence indicating that something is seriously amiss.

As in the JFK case, there are irregularities with the archduke's motorcade and lax security measures for the royal passage through Sarajevo's streets, as well as the revelation in advance of the parade route in the press.

However, unlike the Kennedy assassination, wherein the "lone gunman" was the sanctioned story, a ring of Serbian co-conspirators is implicated in the archduke's murder. Pfeffer is pressured by high-ranking Austro-Hungarian politicians, law enforcement authorities and military men to hastily sign onto a concocted Warren Commission-type report that claims the government of Serbia backed the Black Hand assassins. But Pfeffer, insisting on due diligence, smells a rat. When he balks at initialing the bogus report, the converted Jew's ancestry is thrown back in Pfeffer's face by anti-Semitic officials.

Sarajevo skillfully unravels like a police procedural and becomes a political thriller crossed by a whodunit. But more important than who actually shot Ferdinand is: Why was he killed? The movie mystery includes many film noir conventions, such as the outside investigator who follows his internal moral code versus establishment bureaucrats, and for good measure, a high society dame is thrown into the mix, with Melika Forouton portraying the swanky Serbian Marija Jeftanovic. And in a nod to the post-9/11 "War on Terror," imprisoned Serbians are waterboarded, tortured, and held in Abu Ghraib-type squalor.

Like a dog with a bone, Pfeffer pursues the truth, uncovering the hidden hand of Austro-Hungarian and German military intelligence services, which have their own sinister agendas. According to the film's conspiracy theory, the liberal-minded archduke wanted to grant the empire's ethnic groups greater autonomy, so reactionary forces eliminated him before he could ascend to the throne. Plus, his orchestrated death provided the pretext Austro-Hungarian and German hawks needed to declare war on Serbia. Coincidentally (?), Sarajevo is also timed for the 50^th anniversary of the falsified Aug. 2, 1964, Gulf of Tonkin incident, which provided another warmonger, Lyndon Johnson, with the pretext to escalate the Vietnam War.

As everyone knows, the Austro-Hungarian and German plot (if that's what it was) resulted in the carnage of World War I, one of the greatest bloodbaths in human history that laid waste to the Empire and Germany.

Sarajevo is reminiscent of another classic movie set in South East Europe - Costa-Gavras' Academy Award winning Z. In this 1969 masterpiece, Greece's liberal-minded candidate (movingly played by Yves Montand) is assassinated by a high-ranking right-wing conspiracy, and a prosecutor who is a faithful functionary of the state (Jean-Louis Trintignant) stumbles upon the truth. But Prochaska's carefully calibrated Sarajevo moves more deliberately than the rapidly paced Z.

World War I's unprecedented mass murder and mayhem, set into motion by incendiary events in South East Europe, inspired many of cinema's greatest antiwar movies, including All Quiet on the Western Front, La Grande Illusion, Paths of Glory, King of Hearts, Oh! What a Lovely War, and Gallipoli. The well-acted, well-made Sarajevo, with its vivid cinematography and compelling anti-imperial conspiracy theory - purported to be historically-based - propels this film into their ranks as one of the great pacifist pictures incited by the "Great War." A hundred years on, Sarajevo reminds us that war is the ultimate not-so-glorious grand illusion - and still hell.

For more info about the 2014 South East European Film Festival see: seefilmla.org. Watch local theaters for release of Sarajevo.

Movie information:
Sarajevo
Directed by Andreas Prochaska
2014, Austria/Germany, 2 hours

Photo: A scene from Sarajevo. Betafilm.com

A million laughs: Go Seth, young man!

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 16:14:00 +0000

For those who enjoy genre spoofs and gross-out humor, Seth MacFarlane's R-rated A Million Ways to Die in the West serves up a heaping pile of humor with a million mirthful movie moments. Others who prefer their comedy cerebral and refined may wish to hang up their spurs and sit this dizzy dosey doe out.

Although I also enjoy the dry wit of a Cole Porter or Noel Coward lyric, I laughed (what's left of) my head off. Around 40 years ago, when Mel Brooks unleashed Blazing Saddles on an unsuspecting public, scenes such as Mongo's horse-punching and the campfire farting vignette were considered to be irreverent and outré. In a similar way today, MacFarlane pushes the envelope of our more jaded 21st century sensibilities with scatological humor and jokes in bad taste that have rarely been seen on the big screen in a major Hollywood production. This is MacFarlane's Family Guy and American Dad animated TV series on cinematic steroids, raising crudity to the level of high art. (Although Million holds back when it comes to breasts and female genitalia, which Sarah Silverman as the droll hooker Ruth merely describes, whereas male jewels are more graphically exposed. Why the shyness, Seth?)

As the auteur of Million (MacFarlane directed, co-wrote, and stars), he takes deadly aim at the genre conventions of the Western. Indeed, for our continent's indigenous peoples, the Westward ho! expansion from sea to not so shining sea was nothing short of a cataclysmic, genocidal catastrophe that is now also turning into an ecological nightmare. Underneath MacFarlane's critique of the Western lies an awareness of this unadorned history.

Like numerous John Ford classics, part of Million was shot on location in Monument Valley. Mac the Knife satirically deconstructs and debunks cowboy clichés, stressing that in stark contrast to silver screen hagiography, the Wild West was an awful place to find one's self in. There is an especially delicious joke about the "selfishness" of American Indians, and at the very end, (Warning! Don't leave before all the end credits have rolled!) whitey gets his comeuppance for caricaturing newly freed slaves at a county fair.

Like many a genre spoof, Million walks a fine line making fun of the Western's archetypes and tried and true traits. Sometimes the mockery devolves into the very thing which the iconoclastic artiste has been poking fun at. Such may be the case vis-à-vis the relationship between Albert (MacFarlane) and Anna (Charlize Theron, who may be the horse opera's most fetching, winsome gunslinger since Jane Fonda rode the purple sage in 1965's similarly hilarious Cat Ballou.

Million is at its satirical best when it lampoons the mythos of gunslinging. As gunman Clinch Leatherwood, Liam Neeson does a good job of harpooning not only the long-ballyhooed celluloid stereotype of the High Noon-type triggerman, but of the action hero/tough guy roles the actor who once played Oskar Schindler has been lamentably cast in of late. Although it's hard to assess the psychological impact or quantify the romanticizing of gunplay in our culture, who knows how many Westerns that pathetic, demented mass murderer in Santa Barbara and others of his shooting spree ilk have seen since birth?

MacFarlane's screen romp is also at its finest when depicting Native Americans and takes on Hollywood's caricatured "noble savage." Million portrays them as leading Albert on an Oz-like trip wherein he attains clarity, if not a taste of enlightenment. Wes Studi -- who played Magua in 1992's Last of the Mohicans, the title character in 1992's Geronimo: An American Legend, and the Na'vi chief in 2009's Avatar - is, as usual, great, portraying Cochise. Studi steals the show.

Neil Patrick Harris also co-stars as Foy, a cross between city slicker and gunslinger who competes with Albert for the affections of Louise (played by Amanda Seyfried who, unlike Theron, is not, for some reason, very attractive here). Look for comic Bill Maher in a clever cameo.

As for Million's plot, it's secondary to the boundless laughs for those tickled pink by sheep penises, hats full of excrement, and the like. Be advised - A Million Ways to Die in the West is for those amused by vulgar boundary-stretching and sheer goofiness. To paraphrase Horace Greeley, it made me say: "Go Seth, young man!"

Photo: Universal Studios/AP

"Trust Me": Nice agents finish last?

Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:37:00 +0000

As the old cliché goes, Clark Gregg is one of those actors whose name audiences may not know but whose face they will recognize. Especially for his recurring role as Agent Phil Coulson in various permutations of the Marvel comics-derived big- and little-screen versions of The Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., et al. Gregg similarly played FBI Special Agent Michael Casper in The West Wing. But in Trust Me, Gregg plays an agent of a different sort - a Hollywood talent agent. And not only that, in addition to starring in this indie, Gregg wrote and directed it.

As Howard Holloway, Gregg portrays what may be his most science fiction, hard to believe character yet: An actors' agent with a heart of gold, in the tradition of Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose. Not only does he have his clients' interests at heart, but to stretch credulity even further, Holloway accepts only a ten percent commission. (I find Thor's Mjölnir magic hammer or radioactive spiders turning teens into superheroes with a bite to be easier to swallow than that.) Be that as it may, Holloway - a former child actor who focuses on recruiting and representing under-aged thespians - struggles to keep his head above water in a biz Trust Me depicts as being utterly ruthless.

In this drama which features a stellar cast and has some lighter moments, Holloway must contend with unscrupulous producers Agnes and Meg (Felicity Huffman, Allison Janney), mean manager Janice (Molly Shannon), demented dad Ray (Paul Sparks) and Howard's doppelganger Aldo (Sam Rockwell). Aldo is a far more successful agent, probably because he's a kleptomaniac schemer constantly trying to lure Holloway's clients away from him.

In particular, Aldo is trying to steal Holloway's latest find who is up for a plum lead role in a film slated to go franchise, 14-year-old Lydia (Saxon Sharbino, who will co-star in Sam Raimi's 2015 Poltergeist remake). Will Lydia and her unstable father Ray stay true blue to Holloway or switch allegiances over to the flashier Aldo, who seems to be more of a power player in Tinseltown's constellation?

Holloway scrapes by modestly: If you think it's hard making a living as a talent, try living off of ten percent of what those artists earn, when they do find work. He seems to have difficulty clinching deals. Howard may be one of those individuals who are their own worst enemy. As a former child actor himself, at the risk of blowing the biggest deal of his career, he intervenes at the last minute to protect Lydia from - well, find out for yourself.

Anyway, in a subplot, the lonely Holloway woos solo mom neighbor Marcy (Amanda Peets). But even here the poor schnook must deal with contention - look for William Macy in a droll, totally shameless cameo at a car dealership.

It's said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but in Howard Holloway's case it puts him on a path to heaven. Along the plot twists and turns (you just can't trust those Hollywood big shots!) Trust Me leads to a magical realist dénouement that hearkens back to Agent Coulson's special effects-laden superhero movies. Along the way, with this scathing indictment of the film industry Gregg lays bare the movie colony's seamy side, and in doing so his Trust Me is in the tradition of Billy Wilder's 1950 Sunset Boulevard and Robert Aldrich's 1955 The Big Knife, based on Clifford Odets' play. With Trust Me, Gregg proves that in addition to acting he is also a talented auteur, who has something to say about the importance of trust and doing the right thing in the midst of our corrupt world. Hurray for Hollywood!

Photo: "Trust Me." Tribeca

Geer does Lear: Much ado about the 21st century relevancy of a Shakespearean plot point

Wed, 25 Jun 2014 16:13:00 +0000

The Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum in Los Angeles has launched its season gloriously with King Lear, heralding a summer quintet of Shakespearean productions to honor the Bard's 450th birthday.

This masterpiece has been oft-produced on stage and screen. Theatricum artistic director Ellen Geer has adapted what may well be the most original version of Lear since - if not the First Folio - since Jean-Luc Godard's 1987 film co-starring Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith, and Molly Ringwald. What makes the Theatricum's Lear so offbeat is its gender role reversals. Here, the monarch is portrayed by a woman, with Ellen herself in the title role, and Lear's daughters all played by males: Theatricum veterans Aaron Hendry as Goneril and Christopher W. Jones as Regan, and relative newcomer Dane Oliver as a fresh-faced, sweet, if tongue-tied Cordelia.

Now, these actors do not perform in drag and do play roles that match their offstage sex. The gender reassignment flows smoothly. Britain, after all, where Shakespeare's tragedy takes place, has had female rulers such as Queen Victoria and both Elizabeths who reigned for long periods.

As Eden (Shakespeare's Edgar), Willow Geer also switches gears: In the second act her character masquerades as a male beggar, a disguise necessitated by the treachery of Eden's half-sister Igraine (Abby Craden plays the character Shakespeare called Edmond), who cravenly tricks their father, the Earl of Gloucester (Alan Blumenfeld), into believing that Eden is plotting against him.

Lear's characters arguably commit Western theater's biggest, most tragic mistakes since Oedipus plucked his eyes out at ancient Greek amphitheaters. Lear's vanity, puffed up over a lifetime of being susceptible to flattery as the monarch, leads to a colossal error when it comes to her offspring. Gloucester betrays a similar lapse in judgment. If power corrupts, absolute power corrupts the ego absolutely -- especially of an absolute monarch. It was Shakespeare's existential genius to make his characters only able to think logically after going mad, or able to see clearly after losing one's eyesight (in what may be a reference to Sophocles' Oedipus the King).

The white-haired Ellen Geer's energetic acting is extraordinary, full of vitality that belies and defies her years. There's only room to mention a few standouts in this large cast. Abby Craden's spiteful, born-out-of-wedlock Igraine is a conniving, cunning schemer, determined to rise on the social totem pole by any means necessary.

As the Earl of Gloucester, Alan Blumenfeld is moving as a man who has been blinded -- literally. Willow Geer splendidly comes alive in the second act, with scenes her Eden dominates. Depicting Lear's Fool, Mellora Marshall delivers the goods with an uncanny cross-dressing performance in what is a pivotal role, since in medieval Europe court jesters were the only subjects allowed to publicly voice critiques of the crown and court. And if ever a crowned head needed a sound tongue lashing (albeit with its barbs sugarcoated in humor), it is Lear, whose epic mistakes in judging character wreak havoc.

Ellen Geer's and Marshall's co-direction is likewise inspired, making full use of the amphitheater's space amidst Topanga Canyon's sylvan glade. With much of the action happening all around you, this is a theatrical version of Cinerama -- in 3-D and living color! Lear's rooftop madness scene is stunningly staged, and there's plenty of swordplay onstage and gamboling through the surrounding woods.

Works written centuries ago can take on new meaning when put into a modern context, striking contemporary chords. The intercepting of messages, which plays a key role in Lear (circa 1606), has an updated relevance for our century. Although Lear's parchment and ink messages are not the emails and phone calls of our time, we can relate this plot device to any number of modern phone hacking scandals, and to the whole brouhaha surrounding Edward Snowden, with its releases of classified information. Indeed, the online publication that Glenn Greenwald and his First Look Media partners in thought crime have created is called The Intercept.

Lear is being performed in repertory through Oct. 4 along with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, and All's Well That Ends Well, plus Bill Cain's Equivocation, which imagines a Shakespeare-like playwright writing about Guy Fawkes and England's 1605 Gunpowder Plot, at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: (310) 455-3723, or see: www.Theatricum.com.

A largely forgotten tale: Communist Party's role in the South

Tue, 24 Jun 2014 15:06:00 +0000

Worker organizing in the South has always been especially difficult. Some even consider the South a lost cause regarding workers' rights due to the relative weakness of most unions and the relative strength of institutional racism magnified by a centuries-long relationship with slavery and Jim Crow.

James J. Lorence's The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941 convincingly challenges the notion that Southern white workers were incapable of collective, concerted action with African Americans. His analysis focuses on the early 1930s' Great Depression era through the emerging economic recovering of the early 1940s due to an increasingly robust wartime economy.

Lorence vividly describes the emergence of communist-led Unemployed Councils and independent unions in the early 1930s. He highlights the Communist Party's uniquely focused efforts to organize a deeply impoverished and oppressed African American community - a community largely ignored by the broader Georgia labor movement and the Socialist Party.

In fact, the Georgia AFL (American Federation of Labor) was often more concerned with maintaining jobs and wage rates for its largely white union membership and paid very little attention to organizing the unemployed, especially African Americans - who, if organized, often found themselves in segregated unions.

Lorence refers to the Socialist Party of the early 1930s as an "empty vessel, hopelessly handicapped" by a "conservative old guard" unwilling to challenge internal racism, and unable to see the larger struggle against racism generally as central to the class struggle.

Lorence writes that the Communist Party took a decidedly different approach, and instead challenged racism head-on in Georgia.

According to Lorence, the party played "a crucial role ... in mobilizing jobless workers as a social and political force in urban Georgia." "Communists," he says, "became well known as the activists who were most willing to advance the interests of the needy," especially African Americans, "in the political arena and with the institutions and individuals [they] encountered in the welfare bureaucracy."

As Lorence puts it, "both urban and rural workers, the human casualties of a broken economy, refused to submit quietly to their fate" and eventually "embraced collective action to redress their grievances," largely due to Communist Party agitation and organizing.

In fact, he writes, the Communist Party "stubbornly clung to its insistence on racially integrated" meetings, rallies and civil disobedience and as a result it became known as "the major advocate for the African American jobless," earning the respect and admiration of liberal African American organizations like the NAACP and Urban League, as well as Black churches and fraternities.

But the party faced harsh external repression - a number of leading members were thrown in jail and/or run out of Georgia, march permits were denied, members were harassed and beaten, and the broader movement was sometimes hesitant to collaborate. In addition, the party faced internal "leadership failures and limited financial resources."

Party leader Angelo Herndon, who would soon find himself locked away in a Georgia jail cell, "observed [by 1932] that no unemployed groups were then active, membership had declined, and mass organization work had faltered" due to a mix of external repression and internal disunity.

Ultimately, the party would prove unable to grow as much as in neighboring Alabama; the party there had been instrumental in founding and organizing the Sharecroppers' Union and was able to grow considerably through that organizational form.

Georgia's Communists challenged the racist application of New Deal federal works programs and other relief in their state.

In Georgia, "a state hostile to the very concept of relief," private charities like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and local churches "shouldered most of the welfare burden," Lorence writes, while employers, large landowners and political elites made every effort to obstruct federal relief for the unemployed.

Often local business owners, big landowners, textile mill operators and white civic leaders colluded with racist relief agency officials to deny African American laborers relief and thereby force them into a state of semi-slavery or starvation.

City officials also "maintained social control by arresting unemployed workers for vagrancy and suppressing industrial union organizers for 'disorderly conduct," notes Lorence. Atlanta Mayor James Key went so far as to say, "the only place we have in Atlanta for Communists [and union organizers generally] is behind bars."

While Lorence's book focuses on more than the role of Communists and the Communist Party, the CP is cast as a major - possibly the decisive - factor in Georgia's unemployed movement and among African Americans organizing for social and economic justice in general.

The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941 is well researched and highly readable. It tells a largely forgotten tale of the Communist Party's leadership role in not only challenging racism, but also developing the long-term tactics and strategies that would ultimately lay the groundwork for what would eventually become the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Lorence is also the author of The Suppression of Salt of the Earth: How Hollywood, Big Labor, and Politicians Blacklisted a Movie in the American Cold War. That book and The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941 are highly recommended.

Book information:
The Unemployed People's Movement: Leftists, Liberals, and Labor in Georgia, 1929-1941
By James J. Lorence

University of Georgia Press, 2011, 328 pages, paperback $24.95, Kindle $21.34

"Eat With Me": You may be hungry an hour after this tasty coming-out tale

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 11:46:00 +0000

Eat With Me, which world premiered at the LA Film Festival, alternates between being an enjoyable, poignant coming-out comedy drama and a paint-or rather film-by numbers story. The plot of writer/director David Au's feature-length directorial debut movie also has more holes in it than-to use a culinary comparison-Swiss cheese.

Elliot (the diffident Teddy Chen Culver) is a restaurateur of what is presumably a Chinese eatery (like much else in this story, Au never specifies the ancestry of his Asian American characters) that is more or less a run of the mill dive in (presumably) a rather generic downtown L.A. that could be the downtown of almost any urban American center. As the restaurant with its mediocre menu faces shuttering, after a falling out with her husband (over what, we're never really quite sure), Elliot's mother Emma (the wonderful Sharon Omi) suddenly shows up out of nowhere and starts lodging at her son's pad in (presumably) downtown L.A.

Complications ensue, as Elliot's homosexuality becomes an inescapable fact that Emma must contend with and face. She had more or less previously known of her son's sexual orientation but preferred to ignore it. Eat With Me is most insightful when it shows how Elliot's parents' failure to communicate is passed down to him, resulting in his inability to form lasting relationships and his miscommunications with the sensitive musician Ian (Aidan Bristow).

The various cooking sequences have that painting/filming by numbers quality: There is a food network, chefs are celebrities, Anthony Bourdain has replaced the news on CNN, so Au appears to be pandering to that coveted foodie demographic.

The strength of Eat With Me is its cast, led by the estimable Sharon Omi, who is stellar as a loving if traditional, conservative mom struggling with her son's "deviance" off the beaten sexual path and with her deep maternal instincts, which she expresses by cleaning his loft and by (but of course!) cooking for the son she is desperately trying to reach to and connect with. Up to now, Omi has mostly been confined to small big and little screen roles, but here this gifted artist is allowed to shine in a lead role, and we are all the better for it.

MADtv's Nicole Sullivan is a sheer delight as the wacky, quirky next door neighbor Maureen, who accidentally "enlightens" Emma in a droll sequence. Sullivan adds much of the comic relief needed to defuse what could have been a tense drama in other hands.

Playing a version of himself, George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) -- who was once Asian Americans' elder statesman, and is now rather admirably playing that role for LGBTQ America-plays a key role in a scene-stealing cameo about the importance of acceptance: Of one's life, of one's self, and the true self of others. Bravo, Mr. Takei, and thanks for your continuing courage.

Jamila Alina plays the obligatory kooky Asian gal pal Jenny, who works at Elliot's restaurant. She's good fun whenever she's onscreen.

As Elliot must face paying the mortgage for his restaurant, through his mom's dumplings he discovers a possible solution sure to please viewers out there in foodie-land. However, Au pulls the denouement out of thin air-the locale and so on go completely unexplained, like much of this (to use a cooking term) half-baked story. Worst of all is the awful music that seems to have nothing to do with the images appearing onscreen and are just distracting.

Unlike Gustavo Dudamel, music director of Venezuela's Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar and conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who worked closely with director Alberto Arvelo to create the score for another LAFF (U.S.) premiere, The Liberator, Eat's totally inorganic soundtrack eats it.

Although you may be hungry an hour after viewing, overall Eat With Me is an enjoyable confection with an important point of view, as LGBTQ people progress towards full equality. Watch for local screenings.

Eat with Me

Director: David Au

Writer: David Au

Stars: Sharon Omi, Teddy Chen Culver, Nicole Sullivan

USA, 2014, 95 min

www.facebook.com/dumplingmovie

Photo: Still from website.

Public intimacy in the new South Africa

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 10:54:00 +0000

San Francisco -- Picture South Africa! Majestic elephants, giraffes, lions, and leaping impalas on safari! Colorful dances! Sparkling sand beaches, and the lush, fertile green of the genteel wine country. International tourists relaxing poolside at spotless resorts.

Maybe that's not your image. Maybe you think of reverent portraits of the liberator Nelson Mandela, posters of fists raised in freedom salutes, massed choruses singing the rich rainbow harmonies of the New Afrika.

The 25 artists and collectives represented in Public Intimacy: Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa, on view only through June 29^th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in Downtown San Francisco, have a pointedly different outlook. Their focus is on "close views, small actions or gestures that occur in public," serving to redefine how people move and interact in a society that badly needed some re-ordering of priorities. This is no rose-tinted propaganda for anyone or anything except the ecstatic celebration of freedom's voice.

Public Intimacy is not outwardly political, but it raises questions about the legacy not only of apartheid but of the freedom struggle itself. Today's generation has left behind the sacrosanct image of Nelson Mandela and his allies, the latter -- some of them -- looking a little tarnished amidst the opportunities that have opened up to them. In one image of a mock McDonald's with the famous double arch, the eatery is named "Mandela's," where "the revolution will be merchandized." In another image, a rear view mirror draped in the colors of the South African flag, the motto reads: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." No illusions, no myths, are sacrosanct within these artists' field of vision. If failures and realities are out there for the eye to see, they will be documented by every contemporary medium.

Photography and video are dominant here, but also sculpture, installation, beadwork, painting, drawing, tapestry, comics, zines, and intermittent editions from the Chimurenga collective publishing enterprise. What is the role of media? When is it appropriate to voice criticism, and when to temper or withhold it? In such a fast-moving society, Public Intimacy poses the question, What does it actually mean to be a full citizen of South Africa?

Significantly, the exhibition casts an eye back to some seminal photographers who during the apartheid era dared to click their cameras around the corners and below the surfaces of racial separation. Such artists as Ernest Cole, Billy Monk, and David Goldblatt created a transgressive documentation of the underground intercultural and interracial relations that managed to find expression below the radar of the security state. In Ian Berry's 1959 photo spread for Drum magazine, we see images of Cape Town's down-low drag balls populated by insouciant, defiant, courageous cross-dressers and their suitors. Berry, incidentally, was the only photographer at the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre.

We see a powerful urge to document lesbian life in South Africa, especially in the wake of horrifying, and sometimes publicized "curative" rapes and honor killings that tragically belie the nation's advanced thinking as reflected in its new Constitution.

Santu Mofokeng quietly and devastatingly photographs the contours of an earth subjected to abuse by mining, by the encroachment of industry, the new wastelands of climate change and pollution.

Xenophobia is one of South Africa's big problems, the often violent responses to working people from elsewhere in the continent who go there to seek their fortune. Several art works address this. Others depict women's and men's hostels, sad, impersonal compounds of same-sex communities of industrial laborers, where nonetheless life exerts itself, friendships form, new stories are told.

Despite the everyday unnecessary tragedies, there reigns here a spirit of wanting to emphasize positive life, intimacy among friends and lovers, the joy of freedom.

Be advised: This installation is massive. You'll want to devote a minimum two hours to exploring its mesmerizing byways, escaping into the inner soul of a nation being exuberantly reborn. Be sure to check out the videos: one about Zanele Muholi's photography documentation project, another featuring magnificent charcoal drawings by William Kentridge called Tide Table, and a project with the Handspring Puppet Company (which created the 2007 War Horse stage production) called Or You Could Kiss Me, whose original puppets are also on display here.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. For more info: www.ybca.org, or call 415.978-ARTS.

Photo: Tapestry by Athi-Patra Ruga, a Utopian vision of the New South Africa.

Piketty, The Wall Street Journal, and rational conservatives

Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:26:00 +0000

Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the 21st Century, has almost had the effect of a tsunami on economic thinking here in the United States after its translation from French into English washed up on our monoglot shores. In France itself it has been treated as more less just another economics book-- no big deal.

Its impact on the U.S. is due to many factors, not least of which is the fact that our educational system is woefully inadequate by European standards as well as our lower cultural literacy compared to Europe. Piketty's work appears here as a revelation, but to the educated European he is only providing a fuller historical context for what most people already understand.

Marxists, especially, should have been underwhelmed to learn that the capitalist system creates imbalances in wealth with a large pool of poor and exploited workers at one pole and a small group of capitalists hogging the social wealth at the other.

Piketty tells us this system is not sustainable and to prevent the "Marxist Apocalypse" the capitalists have to modify their behavior and moderate the social inequalities their system creates. The thought that capitalism might be replaced is indeed an apocalyptic nightmare for the bourgeoisie but for the working classes it might be more like a Marxist Epiphany come true.

The Wall Street Journal, no friend to the Left, has reviewed Piketty's book ("A Not-So-Radical French Thinker" by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, weekend edition May 24-25, 2014). Here we find, implicitly, that not only have some on the left "lost it" over seeing Peketty as some sort of super progressive, but that many American "conservatives" have, explicitly, also gone completely off the deep end by referring to Piketty as a "soft Marxist."

The conservative movement is the U.S. is, however, overloaded with "thinkers" who are intellectually immature and dishonest, selling their brain power (such as it is) to the Koch brothers, the Murdochs, and their ilk. The WSJ review points out that Piketty is a professional academic economist and his book merits consideration. He is a neo-liberal economist who supports market capitalism and, like many other neo-liberals, he advocates "government redistribution to smooth out some of the market's excesses."

The WSJ points out that in France you can find "honest-to-goodness actual Marxists [that] are still at large" and Piketty is not one of them. The fact that he has simply described how capitalism is actually functioning and this is enough to send so called conservative intellectuals into a nose dive (one from the American Enterprise Institute is especially mentioned) over "soft Marxism" is evidence enough that many, I think most, conservatives have no regard at all for the facts or even rational discussion but are only mouthpieces for the corporate interests who support them as paid propagandists.

Piketty is worth reading. Marxists have a deeper understanding, I think, about the functioning of the capitalist system so there will be no surprises here, but readers will find a detailed history of wealth distribution and creation over the last 300 years that will convince anyone with an open mind that this system is exploitative and is leading towards an implosion that could very well destroy it.

Marxists, of course, think the system must be replaced and is ultimately existentially unreformable. Neo-liberals such as Piketty do not agree and he proposes reforms in his book which he thinks will save the sinking ship (such as an international, or at least a European Union, wealth tax).

The WSJ review suggests that the right wing could benefit from reading Piketty. If the inequality he describes is not remedied "it could undermine the social order" and "for all the huffing and puffing about Mr. Piketty's supposedly revolutionary ideas, that conservative insight might be his most lasting contribution to the American debate." Indeed, it well might.

Photo: Los Altos Library Facebook page

Ruby Dee, 91: Iconic actress, civil rights activist

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 16:07:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Ruby Dee, an acclaimed actress and civil rights activist whose versatile career spanned stage, radio television and film, has died at age 91.

Nora Davis Day, her daughter, told The Associated Press on Thursday that her mother died at home in New Rochelle on Wednesday night of "natural causes."

Dee, who frequently acted alongside her husband of 56 years, Ossie Davis, was with loved ones, she added.

"We have had her for so long and we loved her so much," Day said. "She took her final bow last night at home surrounded by her children and grandchildren."

Day added: "We gave her our permission to set sail. She opened her eyes, closed her eyes and away she went."

Her long career brought her an Oscar nomination at age 83 for best supporting actress for her maternal role in the 2007 film "American Gangster." She also won an Emmy and was nominated for several others. Age didn't slow her down.

"I think you mustn't tell your body, you mustn't tell your soul, 'I'm going to retire,'" Dee told The Associated Press in 2001. "You may be changing your life emphasis, but there's still things that you have in mind to do that now seems the right time to do. I really don't believe in retiring as long as you can breathe."

She and her late husband were frequent collaborators. Their partnership rivaled the achievements of other celebrated acting couples. But they were more than performers; they were also activists who fought for civil rights, particularly for blacks.

"We used the arts as part of our struggle," she said in 2006. "Ossie said he knew he had to conduct himself differently with skill and thought."

In 1998, the pair celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and an even longer association in show business with the publication of a dual autobiography, "With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together."

Davis died in February 2005. Among those who mourned at his funeral included former President Bill Clinton, Harry Belafonte and Spike Lee.

Davis and Dee met in 1945 when she auditioned for the Broadway play "Jeb," starring Davis (both were cast in it). In December 1948, on a day off from rehearsals from another play, Davis and Dee took a bus to New Jersey to get married. They already were so close that "it felt almost like an appointment we finally got around to keeping," Dee wrote in "In This Life Together."

They shared billing in 11 stage productions and five movies during long parallel careers. Dee's fifth film, "No Way Out" with Sidney Poitier in 1950, was her husband's first. Along with film, stage and television, their richly honored careers extended to a radio show, "The Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Story Hour," that featured a mix of civil rights themes. Davis directed one of their joint film appearances, "Countdown at Kusini" (1976).

Both were active in civil rights issues and efforts to end discrimination in the entertainment industry and elsewhere. Dee and Davis fought against McCarthyism in the 1950's, served as masters of ceremonies for the historic 1963 March on Washington and she spoke at the funeral for Martin Luther King Jr.

The couple's battle in the civil rights arena was lifelong: In 1999, the couple was arrested while protesting the shooting death of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant, by New York City police.

Among her best-known films was "A Raisin in the Sun," in 1961, based on the classic play that explored racial discrimination and black frustration (she was also in the 1959 stage version). On television, she was on the soap operas such in the 1950s and '60s, a rare sight for a black actress in the 1950s and 60s.

As she aged, she continued to reach new career heights. Dee was the voice of wisdom and reason as Mother Sister in Spike Lee's 1989 film, "Do the Right Thing," alongside her husband. She won an Emmy as supporting actress in a miniseries or special for 1990's "Decoration Day."

She won a National Medal of the Arts in 1995 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 2000. In 2004, she and Davis received Kennedy Center Honors. In 2007, Davis and Dee's book won a Grammy for best spoken word album.

Born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Dee was an infant when her family moved to Harlem, New York. She graduated from a highly competitive high school and enrolled in college but longed for show business.

"I wanted to be an actor but the chances for success did not look promising," she wrote in their joint autobiography.

But in 1940 she got a part in a Harlem production of a new play, "On Strivers Row," which she later called "one giant step" to becoming a person and a performer.

In 1965, she became the first black woman to play lead roles at the American Shakespeare Festival. She won an Obie Award for the title role in Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena" and a Drama Desk Award for her role in "Wedding Band."

Most recently, Dee performed her one-woman stage show, "My One Good Nerve: A Visit With Ruby Dee," in theaters across the country. The show was a compilation of some of the short stories, humor and poetry in her book of the same title.

She is survived by three children: Nora, Hasna and Guy, and seven grandchildren.

Day said funeral services will be private but a public memorial will be scheduled.

Photo: Ruby Dee and husband Ossie Davis. AP

“Ida”: Women discover socialist Poland and themselves

Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:23:00 +0000

"Ida" is something different.

In Poland around 1960, Anna is a novitiate in the convent where she was raised. She always thought she was an orphan. When she gets ready to take her vows, the Mother Superior reveals to her that she has an aunt whom she should visit before committing herself to a lifetime of poverty, abstinence, and obedience. As she is ordered, Anna leaves her convent and her tiny village for the first time in her conscious life.

In the city, she meets her Aunt Wanda, who immediately tells Anna that she isn't Anna and that her name is really Ida. The aunt then answers the timeless question asked by Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl:" Can a Jewish girl join a convent? Ida was born to a Jewish family that suffered under the Nazi occupation. Her Aunt Wanda was a brave partisan fighter during World War II and became a judge in socialist Poland.

It's a road picture, as the two women go back to their family's homestead and figure out what happened. Exploring just who and what Ida and Wanda are peels off layers of the recent history of Poland. The movie is in black and white and uses the old 1940s more-or-less-square screen. The language is Polish with subtitles, but there's hardly any dialogue. There's almost no action either. Moviegoers study the tragedy mostly through the faces of the actors. The scenery is almost all a tragic, worn, gray. The narrative steadily treads from Ida's first awakening to her final decision about taking her vows. Wanda, too, experiences the full force of self-confrontation and what to do about it as the secrets are laid open like festering wounds.

The audience is brought into the place, the times, and the tragedies in a powerful emotional experience.

Movie information:
"Ida"
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
2014, Polish/Danish

100 minutes, PG-13, Polish with English subtitles

Photo: Agata Trzebuchowska as Ida.

Hollywood Heritage celebrates 100 years of filmmaking in Hawaii

Fri, 06 Jun 2014 16:41:00 +0000

HOLLYWOOD - Hollywood Heritage will be kicking off the summer with Ed Rampell, co-author of "The Hawai'i Movie And Television Book: Celebrating 100 Years of Film Production Throughout the Hawaiian Islands." Rampell will give a video presentation with laser focus on Hollywood feature films and television productions that are shot and set there.

The event will take place on Wednesday, June 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the historic Lasky-DeMille Barn and will cap off this season's Evening @ the Barn series.

The Hollywood Heritage Museum is the oldest movie studio that still exists in Hollywood. Located across from the Hollywood Bowl, it is now a repository of relics and memorabilia from cinema's silent era and golden age in what was a barn where Cecil B. DeMille shot a Western in 1912!

Included in the presentation and book: The screen images of Polynesians and Asians; how South Seas Cinema more than any other film genre is obsessed with the theme of Utopia; where films/TV shows were shot on location in the Hawaiian Islands; a history of the present day Hawai'i Film/TV Industry; and iconic Hawai'i crime fighters as portrayed on screen.

Rampell also places in historic context and re-evaluates important movies such as 1995's Waterworld and 1998's Godzilla, revealing how they are motion picture parables of global warming and nuclear testing.

Rampell is co-founder of the South Seas Cinema Society, an Oahu-based fan club/film society. "The Hawai'i Movie And Television Book" is co-authored by Luis Reyes, who also co-wrote with Rampell "Made In Paradise, Hollywood's Films Of Hawaii And The South Seas" and "Pearl Harbor In The Movies," all published by Honolulu's Mutual Publishing.

After the presentation Mr. Rampell will be signing copies of his book that will be available in the museum store.

The evening will feature live music by The Noble Gasses Surf and delicious Hawaiian influenced foods and specialty drinks. Festive attire is encouraged, so dust off your Hawaiian shirt! Seating is limited. Free parking is available in the Hollywood Bowl Lot "D". Pre-sale tickets are available online at: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/700741.

Film historian and critic Ed Rampell lived in Tahiti, Samoa, Hawaii, and Micronesia, where he reported on the nuclear-free and independent Pacific movement. He co-authored two books on Pacific Island politics, and is the author of "Progressive Hollywood, A People's Film History of the United States." He is a co-founder of the James Agee Cinema Circle and one of L.A.'s most prolific film/theatre/opera reviewers. Many of his reviews appear on Peoplesworld.org.

From Congo to North Dakota, films examine the human condition

Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:38:00 +0000

Several films screened at the recent 2014 Tribeca Film Festival deal with the search for peace and justice, or for truth and understanding. They offer much valuable food for thought.

Virunga starts with a brief history of the Congo, and describes the tragic battles that have led to the current standoff between M23 rebels and government forces. Both sides seem to have been corrupted by greed, each hoping to benefit from outside corporations drilling for oil in Virunga National Park, Africa's oldest national park, a UNESCO world heritage site, and the last natural habitat for the endangered mountain gorilla.

Director Orlando von Einsiedel offers breathtaking shots of the natural habitat and the threatened lives of the world's last mountain gorillas. Park workers risk their lives daily to maintain the park and keep the animals alive and safe from the country's civil war. A brave young woman journalist is shown filming oil company representatives incognito, revealing their blatant racism and corporate greed. As the story unfolds, a mother gorilla is killed and the rebels advance to the doorsteps of the park, and it's a wonder that the filmmakers managed to capture such amazing footage and still survive this real life challenge.

Far off, others are facing a dilemma of a different kind. The hundreds of puppeteers, performers, and magicians of the Kathputli colony in Delhi, India, are facing forced relocation after centuries in the same dwellings outside the gentrifying city. In Tomorrow We Disappear, we see these poor street artists fighting to save the survival of their culture, history and unique form of performing arts. When their land is sold to high-rise developers, they attempt to organize among themselves to prevent this attempt to remove them from their land. This is a mesmerizing documentary revealing a culture unknown to most of the world, and a powerful story of how grassroot organizing really grows from the ground.

Three fascinating documentaries looked at American men in different walks of life.

Art and Craft digs deep into the personal life of a schizophrenic man who has developed an uncanny skill of accurately copying most any masterpiece of art. Mark Landis has anonymously (until this movie) become one of the greatest art forgers in the world. But in his case, he prefers donating his paintings freely to unsuspecting art museums across the country. The film questions the basic concepts of crime and mental illness. It plays as a mystery, as investigators get closer to finding out who this mastermind is, and why he would be doing this for no profit. In the process we learn of his life, the early influence of his parents, the way he learned his skills, and how he deals with his mental illness leading a solitary life. It's a touching human study.

In The Overnighters we get to know deeply Pastor Jay Reinke who consoles and houses unemployed working men at his church near the rich oil fields in Williston, North Dakota. The men are coming by the thousands from across America looking for the elusive and quickly diminishing reality called "a job." Some are running from desperate pasts, leaving wives and girlfriends, dealing with alcohol and substance abuse to name a few. But the compassionate town pastor excludes no one, while he tests the limits of his fellow parishioners and conservative townsfolk. The local newspaper exposes the criminal pasts of a couple of the "overnighters" and puts intense pressure on the Biblical plans and morals of the pastor, who sees all humans as "lambs of God." But what really makes this morality play a masterpiece is the sensitive and penetrating filmmaking of director Jesse Moss (William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe) who gets a shock or two from the pastor as the story takes unexpected twists and turns, leaving the viewer stunned.

The renowned magician James "The Amazing" Randi is the closest thing to the Great Houdini. He's been performing jaw-dropping illusions, escapes, and sleight of hand for over 50 years. His appearances on the Tonight Show and many other popular venues brought him fame as he focused on exposing the truth behind sham faith healers, fortune tellers and psychics. His own personal life is examined and exposed in An Honest Liar, a thrilling adventure into the world of deception, myth making, and illusions.

Randi has debunked many phonies and scam artists who as simply magicians have scammed even the scientific world with their deception. A well respected secular humanist, Randi has also been on a "crusade" to reveal the truth behind religious charlatans. But the biggest secret of his own life is that he is gay and could never reveal this truth. His young partner is an artist from Venezuela, and they have led an idyllic life in a coastal city in Florida - until his partner is arrested for illegal residency. Randi finds himself fighting one of the greatest and most personal battles of his life - saving his loved one from deportation. A touching moment in the film is when he painfully says into the camera that this footage shouldn't be used. But it eventually is, and the truth sets us all free. Randi's quote is a warning to all of us: "No matter how smart or well educated you are - you CAN be deceived."

Finally, a very dark but touching human comedy, Just Before I Go, surprised the audience with its perceptive adult humor and highly comic approach to suicide. Actress Courteney Cox displays a keen sense of humor and an assured hand in her first film as director. Ted is a troubled pet store worker who feels life has become unnecessary, but before ending it all he decides to go back to his hometown to right a few wrongs. He moves in with his brother's highly dysfunctional family, and immediately discovers there are people who have much more serious problems than he does. In the process of reconciling his own life's pains, he discovers other people's pains, and learns valuable lessons. The empathetic treatment of the many characters and the deep human understanding of people in trouble would seem out of place with the risqué, dark humor throughout the film. But balancing these seeming opposites is what made this film one of the most rewarding at the festival. It leaves the viewer with a zest for life and a reason to continue trying to make it a better place for others.